Textual Coherence In Narrative Nonfiction Novel Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In the 1960 s,when the New Journalism was on the rise in America,narrative nonfiction took a quantum leap forward.Writers such as Joan Didion,Gay Talese,and Norman Mailer brought the sophisticated stylistic devices of fiction writing into nonfiction and created a series of classical nonfiction works.This writing trend was quickly spread all over the world,and quite a number of nonfiction writers emerged.In recent years,these works have been introduced into China and translated into Chinese,attracting much attention and fondness.However,there are few studies about the English-Chinese translation of these works.The study object of this report is the English-Chinese translation of the excerpt of No Good Men among the Living: America,the Taliban,and the War through Afghan Eyes,a narrative nonfiction written by the American journalist Anand Gopal.The report includes the case study of it under the skopos theory and its three rules,i.e.skopos rule,coherence rule,and fidelity rule.The translator concludes that the skopos,or purpose of the translation should be determined before the translator begin the translation task of nonfiction.Translation strategies should be made or adjusted according to this purpose.There are some translation examples to show how the translator realized intratextual coherence through amplification,conversion,diction and addition of footnotes,and realized intertextual coherence through reproduction of the ST style in the TT,to prove the applicability of the skopos theory in the translation of narrative nonfiction.Skopos theory is more often used to guide the translation of non-literary works,rather than literary works.However,the nonfiction works,with its true story root and the characteristics of fiction novels,makes it hard to be defined definitely.This report is going to figure out the possibility of the skopos theory guiding the translation of narrative nonfiction.